Book of the week: Beyond a Fringe by Andrew Mitchell

The Conservative MP has written a ‘wonderfully funny’ memoir full of valuable insights into our political culture

Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell
Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell
(Image credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Andrew Mitchell is the kind of Conservative who was “born to rule, or at least to have a jolly good go at it”, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. The son of the Tory politician David Mitchell, he progressed through a series of establishment institutions – prep school, public school, the Army, Cambridge, the City – on his way to becoming an MP in his early 30s.

Having served as a whip under John Major, he became David Cameron’s international development secretary in 2010 – and was promoted to chief whip in 2012. But then “disaster struck”: Mitchell was accused by a police officer of calling him a “pleb” during a row about bicycle access to Downing Street.

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